All things that Suck, and a few things that are Awesome

Tag Archives: Stupidity

I’ve all but given up trying to deal with Trump’s shit on a moment by moment basis because of this post right here: I can’t keep up. It’s also hard work shitting on someone over and over again even if they deserve it by being a horrible human being. I have to source links, make arguments, and it’s exhausting. So I want to try something different while keeping current events and politics and our current social situation in mind. I wonder if making quick and feisty posts about current happenings might be a fun thing to try? After all, this is a relatively new blog here at Everything Sucks and I’m always trying to fine tune things. So what’s up on the current events this week recently? (I’ve been planning and going on a vacation the past week so I’ve been slacking on the nazi thingy) You didn’t even have to think of it because you already know: It’s the Charlottesville demonstrations and protests involving some Nazis and the KKK (ku klux klan) and in case you weren’t aware yet…they Suck.

They suck because of obvious reasons that don’t need to really be stated but I’ll state them briefly in case you’re stupid. Hate is a bad thing. It’s already been scientifically proven that the races are the exact same and no one is actually superior. It’s also 2017. It’s been 72 years since the end of World War 2 where us and our ally buddies defeated the original Nazis in Germany. And for all of our progress since then Nazis are still around and people still sympathize with the losers of this past war. It’s also been 150 years since the end of the civil war, and even though slavery was abolished and there was the civil rights movement in the 1960s, we’re dealing with white superiority groups and the KKK, sympathizers with the lost Confederate cause a century and a half ago. Sure, society has many equality problems to deal with still: police brutality, wage differences between males and females, minority education disadvantages, and others, but at least we’ve made it this far. We’ve made progress! Dealing with the base issues of white superiority and slavery in 2017 is just nuts. This shit is settled and has been settled for centuries, can we move on now?

I want to save the hard logic and reasoning for another post that I’ll probably never write. About how white culture or whatever isn’t really threatened at all. But for this post I want to touch on something that’s very strange and absurd. I’m sure we’ve all seen the pictures of these demonstrators and one thing in particular jumped out at me about the photographs: the tiki torches.

Like my post on covfefe, sometimes things happen that are so…stupid…that it’s hard to comprehend. In that post I argued that the president of the United States, nuclear codes and all, tweeting the word covfefe was insanely…I don’t even know…post-post-modern? Like you can’t make shit up with how ridiculous it is. Despite spell checker, online dictionaries, and even autocorrect, the word covfefe still slipped by various “checks” where it should’ve been caught and was published. He actually posted it! It’s borderline unbelievable and that’s what is shocking about it. It was harmless, but in its stupid harmlessness it screamed of gaudiness and an inability to care about spelling, the tiniest of tiny and stupid errors. Aren’t presidents above that?

And so it is with the tiki torches. Remember, white supremacists are some scary ass people. You don’t want to cross paths with them because they are dangerous as fuck. They’ll slit your throat for looking even slightly like a black person even if you’re just a pasty white dude. Scary people. Bad hombres. So you see these hateful and angry people on social media and it’s scary and saddening and it kills your faith in the future of America and people in general. And then you see the tiki torches. Your mind has a fit of cognitive dissonance as it struggles with the heirs of the Nazis and the Confederacy intellectual property holding the tacky, fun, and not-serious-at all-torches that your aunt and uncle have lit for their fourth of July festivities. People on social media are having a fit about the anger and hatred, but wait, are these terrifying people really carrying tiki torches? Huh?

Like covfefe I wonder if these morons have any idea of how society perceives them. Obviously they’re having an uphill battle in getting their grievances heard, so if I were them I’d try my hardest to adjust my image in a positive way. Everything is image. People think you’re angry, stupid, insecure white people scared of losing your culture of football, Budweiser, and Nascar. Well, prove them wrong. Tailor your image to make them think and not judge you instantly. Hell, it took months for me to figure out a logo for this blog, and to hell with it if anyone suggest a goddamn tiki torch anywhere on my page simple because it’s stupid and doesn’t fit with the image I want to create. My point is that by grabbing tiki torches you immediate undermine any sort of fear you’re intending to put on society and open your entire group up to ridicule even though it’s already being ridiculed. It’s the dumbest thing possible outside of having Easter Bunny costumes being your new uniform. Even if you hate black people and think your race and culture is endangered and may go extinct you up the stupidity to whole new level by marching with unthreatening tiki torches. If anything it makes the whole white culture thing seem really stupid.

And why fucking tiki torches? I’m assuming they were trying to go with the whole “angry mob/power-to-the-people” angle here, and popular belief does say that angry mobs carry torches. And pitchforks! Part of the reason they used torches was because they need light, they’re menacing, and that they’re easy to make. Instead if making their own torches (which seems easy enough; I’ve never made a torch but I think a stick, some oil, and a rag would suffice?) they must’ve just settled for the tikis. I don’t know. I imagine something like this happened:

“Man. I hate n***ers.”

“Yeah, me too. Wanna go to the white power rally?”

“Okay. I think we should bring torches though.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives it that angry mob feel. It looks threatening to those lesser races. Maybe pitchforks if we can find them.”

“I’m not a farmer; I don’t know where a pitchfork would be. Do you know to make a torch though?”

“No.”

“Well. My aunt has some over at her house that they use for the fourth of July parties they have. Where I jumped off the roof after drinking Budweiser!”

“Torches? Like real torches.”

“Nah. They’re them decorative ones, that look like they came from Hawaii or whatever.”

“That’s threatening enough, right?”

“Yeah. A torch is a torch. Who cares.” *shrugs*

“Yeah! White power!!! XD”

So what you end up is this.

They still left the little cap on to put the flame out in a safe and easy manner!

A bunch of angry pissed off white dudes who are mad because other races are being treated fairly or something. I think their complaints are deeper and more complex than that, but still: angry, pissed off white dudes hold flags of people who got their asses kicked by America years and years ago. And what do they compliment their anger with? The fiery anger of theirs is represented by the hot, dangerous, and burning flame that is the tiki torch. Angry mob. White power. Heil Hitler. 4th of Julys at your aunt and uncles. Budweiser. Sparklers. A mosquito free evening. Polynesians and the tropics. Hula skirts. Leis. Moana.

Disclaimer: Even though I use the word “guy” the go-to person can be any gender. Don’t jump my shit about it.

When you first start a job you’re an ignorant idiot and have no idea what the hell is going on. That is understandable because you’re new. No one is going to ask you to do anything remotely important or critical because you’re an ignorant idiot. You’ll probably be mopping or sweeping a floor just to do something because no one is going to trust you with anything else. As time goes on you’re expected to know more and more about the job that is assigned to you, to understand how your single work process fits in with the company-at-large’s goals in its business, and to guide others in how to do their jobs efficiently and correctly. All jobs start like this, but not all jobs end like this. Sometimes, if you stay at a job long enough, or are a reliable enough worker, you transform from the ignorant new-guy, to the dude-who-works-here, and finally into “the go-to guy.” You become the guy that your boss asks to do everything and comes to you nearly every time they need something. Need coverage when someone called in? Call Mr. (or Ms.) Go-To Guy/Gal even if it’s their day off! Need something done quickly and promptly and need it done correctly? Where’s Go-to person at? Anything odd, important, or time-sensitive will be delegated to you. It Sucks and here’s why (and how!).

Two (or more) types of people

I’m a nice guy. I don’t cuss people out or throw a fit when my boss asks me to do something at work. I mean it is called “work” for a reason and if you’re surprised you have to work at work I feel sorry for you; you’re a special kind of idiot. If I have to work slightly harder than someone else I don’t let it bother me unless it becomes a chronic thing where I’m busting my ass while they do nothing. I’m also a perfectionist that takes pride in their work. Even if I am given some tiny, stupid, mundane thing to do, I try to do it in an acceptable and even outstanding fashion while still being efficient. Even if it’s sweeping the floor, I try to do a decent job at it, and try to sweep in a way that takes the least amount of steps in keeping with my love of efficiency. I also realize that the pride you do a job with is visible to others: if you’re a lazy asshole that tries harder to get out of work than the work would actually require, everyone else will know it and will hate you for it. It’s simply not a problem to work while at work, and to work with some dignity towards yourself and the quality of job you’re doing. It makes everybody’s lives more enjoyable.

Speaking of the lazy asshole, guess who is the second type of person? Yeah, the lazy asshole. Take everything I said before, and invert it. When I said I don’t throw a fit when given a job to do, the lazy asshole does throw a fit. This person does their assigned job and no more. Anything extra given to them, even if everyone else also has extra work, will whine, complain, and bitch in the exact same way a 3-year-old does when they don’t get their way. They’re pieces of shit, lazy, and no one likes to work with them. This person has no regard for the quality of work they do or how they are perceived by their coworkers. They’re there to earn a paycheck and they will do it in the most minimally labor-intensive way possible. Usually they’re hated by their fellow coworkers, because if someone is being paid the same that you are you’d expect them to do about the same amount of work. That’s all cool and fine I guess, except there is one special person that also doesn’t want to work with this person: the boss.

If you are a supervisor (if you are, please take this to heart), and you need something done, who would you ask? Your options are the reliable guy or the asshole guy. One guy will get the job done seriously and without complaint while the other will half-ass the job and whine the whole time about it. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to know who’s going to get picked.

One time is fine, sure, but anytime a job needs to be done, the boss prefers to ask the good worker. This further cements their reliability and makes them even more attractive to give extra, important or odd jobs to. Eventually, by being a decent worker who isn’t an ass, you end up being the go-to worker who the boss, and other forms of management, go to if they need something done. It’s a positive feedback loop: by being a good worker you earn more of a reputation, which makes you even demanded by the boss, which gives you even more reputation, and so on. The lazy asshole gets no extra work because it’s too much of a hassle to deal with them in the first place.

The obvious shitty part of this is that it’s unfair. That’s what Sucks about turning into the go-to person. You’d expect the good worker to be rewarded with less work while the asshole gets slammed with the extra crap, and maybe even fired. It Sucks because reality doesn’t work that way. In the past 4 jobs I’ve worked, I inevitably always become one of the go-to guys, and while I’ve found ways to postpone it, it always seems to happen. Sadly, taking on more and more responsibilities as the go-to guy at work eventually leads me to a breaking point where I just quit the job. I yearned for the early days of a job where I could work, be good at what I was doing, but where I didn’t have that reputation for being such a good worker. They were simple times, back then.

If you’re smart and realize this trend is a thing, you want to break it. This is bad because you start to act like not a very good worker even though you are. At my current job I took a different shift where no one knew me, my work skills, and what I was trained in. I was a nobody and no one asked me to do anything. It was like hitting the reset button on being a go-to guy, and it’s been great so far. If you take a new job, you might lay low and not volunteer to learn anything new, because then your “good worker” secret might be known and you’ll end up as that guy. It’s pretty shitty and demoralizing to know that you need to play lazy at a job because the bosses will work you to death if you show them you’re a good worker. That’s how it is though. It Sucks. Don’t become the go-to person at work.

Back in the day, I used to work in the produce department at a local Sam’s Club. I stocked food and had the pleasure of dealing with dumbass customers which could be a post all on its own. It’s been awhile since I worked there so I don’t have that fresh, fiery hatred to rant about it as if I had just experienced it. One of the things I would be asked on a regular basis was, “How do you know what watermelon is good?” or “How do you pick out a good watermelon?” And, dammit, that question would piss me off more than nearly anything else ever, besides asking me for a product that they’re standing in front of. So how do you pick out a watermelon?

“How to Pick a Watermelon”

First off, I’m not a watermelon lover by any means, so me being constantly asked about how to pick out a “good watermelon” was ridiculous from the start: there are no good watermelons because they all taste like shit. It’s like asking me to pick out a good country song: there are no good country songs. The same goes for coleslaw. I also hate cantaloupes and any other sort of “melony” melons. It must be a DNA issue with me or something because I have no control over it. When customers would ask me about “the good watermelons” I’d usually tell them that I don’t even like watermelons so I didn’t know how to “pick one out” and usually suggested that they just randomly grab one. They didn’t like that advice.

…in case you needed to be told this.

Luckily some of the more zealous customers would tell me, matter-of-factly, how to pick out a “good watermelon.”

Some told me to look for wide stripes on them! Watermelons have dark and light green stripes on them (in case you’ve never seen one), and the ones with the wider stripes are “gooder” apparently. How the stripes determine the flavor profile of the melon I don’t know, but that’s what makes a good one. Some other people would say to look for a spot where it lay on the ground because it means the melon is ripe. Nevermind the fact that they all have a spot because melons, in fact, grow on the goddamn ground. Some people would say to look for a little stem at the end that would pull off easily, or something like that. Others would pick the damn melons up, put their ear on them, and knock on them like it was a fucking door. I tried this myself and they all sound the same and I never learned what “sound” a “good watermelon” makes as opposed to a “bad watermelon.” I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few of these “tried and true” methods for determining what makes a watermelon “good” or “bad” but whatever. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this post anyways…

Lightly researching on the internet (because everything on the internet is true), gave some even more ridiculous methods for finding a “good” watermelon. One person insisted on the melon having “straight green lines” and “the more perfect the better.” The same person also recommended that the scar where the flower falls off should be small, and that this “guarantees a perfectly sweet and rupe [sic] watermelon (;” Another person suggested that, as direct advice from a farmer (!!!), that the prospective watermelon pickers look for the location of a bee sting on the melon, given away by a tiny bit of juice oozing out husk. Once again, this all but guarantees that the watermelon is decent. And just to cap it off with some really fucked up nonsense, another person described an old wives tale about putting a broom straw on top of a melon, and if this straw spins, the watermelon is ripe. At least this person didn’t seem to take the technique too seriously, by adding “…entertaining at least.”

Does Any of That Work?

As stated, I’m not a watermelon expert, but I’m pretty damn skeptical of these methods mostly because they trigger my “sounds like bullshit” alarm. Even though a farmer (who is expected to be an expert) suggested something about bee stings, I know enough about bees, or have enough questions about bees and their habits that should undermine that theory. Do bees even eat watermelons? If they do, why would they sting the melons? How do bees know the melon is ripe? Has anyone actually compared a “bee stinged” watermelon to a non-bee melon and compared the taste profile? I doubt it. The theory seems on shaky ground, and just doesn’t seem to make plausible sense. I mean I might be wrong, but it sounds fishy from the start.

What about stripes on the melon? Once again I’m skeptical because there are natural variations in all fruits, vegetables, and meats. It’s a bad analogy, but it’s like saying people with black hair lie a lot, or that blondes are more likely to get cancer. I’m just skeptical that the damn stripes or the “greenness” of the melon really has any correlation with how yummy the melon is. Once again, I might be wrong, but shit like this should be so easily testable that it should be common knowledge by now. Get a green melon, or a “straight striped” melon, and eat away. Are they better, or not? Do some fucking science people.

Ooo, or what about the straw from the broom? Someone please tell me how the melon’s interior, by being sweet, yummy, and tasty can influence a piece of straw to rotate? Do the sugar molecules move in such a way that produces a magnetic field that somehow interacts with the tiny amount of iron in the piece of straw which causes it to rotate? Maybe it does! Or maybe that theory is just some silly bullshit that someone made up?

At the very least, given these ideas might actually work in selecting a melon, no one is this picky when shopping for other fruits, vegetables, and meats. With apples, you check to make sure they’re not rotten, and you buy them. Lettuce? Is it green or brown? Brownish lettuce is starting to rot, and green is fresher (unless the lettuce is naturally brown). Duh. Squishy tomatoes are about to go bad, and potatoes are obvious as fuck due to the horrid smell they emit. No one browses through package after package of ground beef looking for “the good one”; you just grab one that isn’t a nasty brown color and go about your day. But melons, NO! Somehow melons are the single thing in the produce department that takes 5 to 10 minutes to find the “the good one.” Get the hell out of here…

The Right Way?

I found a website that seemed to give some decent tips at finding a “good” melon, or as they called it, a “ripe” melon. First off, a ripe melon is a different thing than a “good” one, and already seemed to be off on an objective footing. Secondly, the things to look for actually make some sense in an obvious way. Suggested traits to look for are a firm husk with no soft spots, a yellow spot where it laid on the ground (as opposed to a whitish spot), the melon should feel heavy, and the melon should sound hollow. These are boring things to look for, but they don’t send my “bullshit” alarm into insane mode because they make logical sense. We look for firm fruit and vegetables all the time, and it’s almost obvious to realize a soft watermelon is going to be nasty to eat. At first I was confused about the spot, but if it starts off as a white spot and becomes yellow as the melon ripens, well, that makes sense then. It’s like saying a red tomato is ripe when a green one isn’t. Like no shit. And the heaviness? That is because a ripe watermelon has a lot of water in it (go figure) and water is pretty heavy. “Listening” to the watermelon also makes some sense as you’re simply listening for a hollow-sounding melon that doesn’t sound “dull.” This ensures that the melon isn’t filled with nasty, goopy, rotten pulp.

The point with these things is that they don’t tell you that the watermelon will taste amazing! No, they simply tell you that the watermelon isn’t fucking unripe or rotting. These traits are also fairly obvious as opposed to the witchcraft the customers all seemed to be doing. There isn’t a “good” watermelon sound that only you can hear properly; you’re just making sure it doesn’t sound dull and liquidy inside. Picking watermelons isn’t glamorous, and you don’t get to prance around like you’re the Watermelon God or something because you’re so damn good at it, so sorry. But considering the watermelon is a melon, these techniques are probably about as good as you can do without cutting it open and having a taste of the damn thing.

If I Ate Watermelons…

…I’d look for something akin to the paragraphs above: a watermelon that isn’t blatantly rotting, soft, or leaking all over the place. That’s it. If I go to buy a watermelon for someone else, that’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to walk up, and get a damn watermelon. It’ll take me twenty seconds at most to find one, and it’ll probably be almost as good as any other watermelon. And if it isn’t, well, it’s not like the watermelon eater I’m shopping for will know the other melons were tastier. It’ll be good enough.

In case you don’t know, Sam’s Club (and hence Walmart) is a fairly large company and they don’t source their melons from mom-and-pop farm operations; they most likely get melons in bulk from big-ass farms that mass produce them, just like every other thing they have in stock. My point here is these melons are planted in bulk, probably genetically modified, grown in bulk, and are all picked at the same time with little care given to ripeness or quality. There isn’t going to be much variance in the melons, because they’re not “hand picked” in that way that hand-picking implies. There probably is nothing better about watermelon A, B, or C; they’re probably nearly carbon-copies or clones of each other. And if I was buying a watermelon from a large supplier like that, well, I’m going to just randomly pick one because that’s about as good as you can do. The melons probably won’t be the best, and won’t vary much in flavor, so don’t waste your time.

If you’re at a farmers market or a local produce supplier, sure, you might be a bit more discerning with your melon picks, although you might be assured that the person picking them is themselves an expert and picked them at the prime of ripeness. This also gives you some reassurance that the melons will be “good” because someone who knows what’s going on with melons would’ve picked them. But if you’re at Walmart, or another large grocery store, just do what I’d tell a few customers to do in regards to finding a “good watermelon”: just fucking pick a melon because they’re most likely all the same.

Fun Fact: There’s a National Watermelon Promotion Board complete with a Watermelon Website. Yes, watermelons have their own lobbying group to influence the government.